Sailing (on purpose) into a hurricane

The 2024 hurricane season, predicted to be “above-normal,” began with the earliest-ever category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic, Hurricane Beryl, in early July, and ended with Rafael, the westernmost major November hurricane on record. Saildrone sailed into both.

“In a lot of ways, this was the most successful hurricane mission that we’ve ever had,” said Greg Foltz, an oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) and one of the principal investigators on the mission.

In 2021, NOAA and Saildrone launched a multiyear mission to deploy Saildrone Explorer uncrewed surface vehicles (USVs) into tropical storms and hurricanes to measure near-surface atmospheric and upper-ocean data to better understand how ocean-atmosphere interaction affects hurricane intensity and improve hurricane prediction models. – Full story

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